Opinions needed

[sb1227]

Ok, I'm looking for opinions here. I have a 75 gal. tank that has mainly LPS corals ( Caulastrea, Lobophyllia, pagoda cup, tubastrea...so far) and plan on adding a few montiporas( I have a capricornis frag and hope to get a digitata soon). Also have some zooanthus and a green star polyp rock. I had a 220 W pc fixture that was old, and a fairly new 260 W aqualight(2-10K, 2-actinic) I was running one 55W-8800K and one 55W 10K bulb on the old fixture (the ballasts were going, one at a time) . I just got a Custom Sea Life 260W fixture with 4 moonlight bulbs (2-10Kand 2 actinic bulbs) So I now have 520W of lighting. I think this is a little overkill for what I have in my tank right now and don't want to completely shock my corals, so would you suggest running the new fixture and using only the actinics on the aqualight? Or would it be better to run just the 10K bulbs on it? And boy, how amazing the difference in the CSL actinics!! Very very blue! Thanks for any opinions, Sue

[Scott]

I don't think that acclimating to more PC's is very important. I changed from 2 110w VHO's to 4 110w VHO's without acclimating and had no problems at all. Acclimatig to metal halides is more important. I would run the new fixture on a cycle of on 2-3 hours and off 2-3 hours for a couple of weeks. Then just go to your normal photoperiod. When you are ready for the Montipora's and want frags just post here. I have one medium sized orange cap and orange digitata. They really don't need that much light to keep their color, purples will turn brown under anything less than MH or possibly T-5's.